Breaking the Surface
Title | Breaking the Surface PDF eBook |
Author | Greg Louganis |
Publisher | Sourcebooks, Inc. |
Pages | 318 |
Release | 2006-03-01 |
Genre | Sports & Recreation |
ISBN | 1402250029 |
Champions aren't born, they're made. The haunting, searingly candid New York Times bestselling memoir of Greg Louganis' journey to overcome homophobia, colorism, and disability to become one of the best Olympic athletes in the world. Greg Louganis began diving at age nine. At sixteen, he beat out more experienced competitors to win a silver medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. By all accounts, the world was his for the taking. But there was more happening beneath the surface... In his tell-all autobiography Greg invites readers into the harrowing, inspirational true story of his life on and off the diving board. Adopted at nine months, Greg spent most of his life fighting colorism in his community and struggling with late-detected dyslexia. Athleticism was an area in which he thrived—he was in control, he could prove his worth, and he would show the world what he was capable of. But as a closeted gay man living in a violently homophobic world, Greg lived in fear: fear that coming out would mean sacrificing his career and reputation, and fear that by not speaking out he was perpetuating the status-quo. But as his skill as a diver became internationally known, the spotlight he found himself under only intensified his struggles, leading to difficulties with relationships and substance abuse. It took the true spirit of a champion to heal, rise above adversity, and fight for others. A sports memoir and LGBTQ book in the vein of Meg Rapinoe's One Life, in Breaking the Surface Olympic diver Greg Louganis reflects on the highs and lows of his iconic life and career—from testing positive to HIV and going on to win double gold medals at the Olympics, to overcoming astounding prejudice and becoming an LGBTQ+ activist—in a raw, honest exploration of how we define greatness.
Gay Berlin
Title | Gay Berlin PDF eBook |
Author | Robert Beachy |
Publisher | Vintage |
Pages | 354 |
Release | 2015-10-13 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 0307473139 |
Winner of Randy Shilts Award In the half century before the Nazis rose to power, Berlin became the undisputed gay capital of the world. Activists and medical professionals made it a city of firsts—the first gay journal, the first homosexual rights organization, the first Institute for Sexual Science, the first sex reassignment surgeries—exploring and educating themselves and the rest of the world about new ways of understanding the human condition. In this fascinating examination of how the uninhibited urban culture of Berlin helped create our categories of sexual orientation and gender identity, Robert Beachy guides readers through the past events and developments that continue to shape and influence our thinking about sex and gender to this day.
Making Gay Okay
Title | Making Gay Okay PDF eBook |
Author | Robert Reilly |
Publisher | Ignatius Press |
Pages | 293 |
Release | 2014-04-15 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1586178334 |
Why are Americans being forced to consider homosexual acts as morally acceptable? Why has the US Supreme Court accepted the validity of same-sex "marriage", which, until a decade ago, was unheard of in the history of Western or any other civilization? Where has the "gay rights" movement come from, and how has it so easily conquered America? The answers are in the dynamics of the rationalization of sexual misbehavior. The power of rationalization-the means by which one mentally transforms wrong into right-drives the gay rights movement, gives it its revolutionary character, and makes its advocates indefatigable. The homosexual cause moved naturally from a plea for tolerance to cultural conquest because the security of its rationalization requires universal acceptance. In other words, we all must say that the bad is good. At stake in the rationalization of homosexual behavior is the notion that human beings are ordered to a purpose that is given by their Nature. The understanding that things have an in-built purpose is being replaced by the idea that everything is subject to man's will and power, which is considered to be without limits. This is what the debate over homosexuality is really about-the Nature of reality itself. The outcome of this dispute will have consequences that reach far beyond the issue at hand. Already America's major institutions have been transformed-its courts, its schools, its military, its civic institutions, and even its diplomacy. The further institutionalization of homosexuality will mean the triumph of force over reason, thus undermining the very foundations of the American Republic.
Making Trouble
Title | Making Trouble PDF eBook |
Author | John D'Emilio |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 319 |
Release | 2014-02-04 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1136641777 |
Combining historical and political analysis with autobiography and memoir, Making Trouble brings together the essays of John D`Emilio, a pioneering gay historian and long-time movement activist.
A Little Gay History
Title | A Little Gay History PDF eBook |
Author | R. B. Parkinson |
Publisher | Columbia University Press |
Pages | 130 |
Release | 2013 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 023116663X |
Originally published: London: The British Museum Press, 2013.
The Making of a Gay Asian Community
Title | The Making of a Gay Asian Community PDF eBook |
Author | Eric C. Wat |
Publisher | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers |
Pages | 236 |
Release | 2002 |
Genre | History |
ISBN |
In this unique oral history, gay Asian Americans talk frankly about their struggle for self-determination and independence. Despite its size, until recently the gay Asian American community in Los Angeles was fragmented and marginalized as gay Asian men separated into their own ethnic cliques and preferred whites as sexual partners. Using a cultural studies lens to interpret the rich oral narratives he collected, Eric C. Wat shows how a dominant sexual ideology can influence our desires and contradict our memories. By documenting the founding of the first gay Asian organization in Southern California (Asian/Pacific Lesbians and Gays [A/PLG]), Wat powerfully portrays the ways gay Asian men confronted these contradictions publicly and struggled to fashion a coherent identity and community based on both their race and sexuality. His analysis returns gay Asian men to the center of their lives and celebrates the power of individuals working collectively to define their desires and combat injustice.
The Stonewall Reader
Title | The Stonewall Reader PDF eBook |
Author | New York Public Library |
Publisher | Penguin |
Pages | 338 |
Release | 2019-04-30 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 0143133519 |
For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded it, with a foreword by Edmund White. Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, presented by The Publishing Triangle Tor.com, Best Books of 2019 (So Far) Harper’s Bazaar, The 20 Best LGBTQ Books of 2019 The Advocate, The Best Queer(ish) Non-Fiction Tomes We Read in 2019 June 28, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. Most importantly the anthology spotlights both iconic activists who were pivotal in the movement, such as Sylvia Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), as well as forgotten figures like Ernestine Eckstein, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s. The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after. Jason Baumann, the NYPL coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections, has edited and introduced the volume to coincide with the NYPL exhibition he has curated on the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation movement of 1969.